Photo restorations


Photo restorations begin with a scan of the photo to be restored.


What if you do not have a scan in hand? Your easy option will be to go to a shop that provides the service of doing a high quality photo scans.


UPS, FedEx and Staples as well as most small business photo shops all provide scanning services.


Alternately, you may have a scanner at your disposal. If the scanner is a high quality scanner it will offer options to remove the appearances of dust from the scanned image. I use an Epson V750 Pro Scanner which produces an excellent scan.


Whether you have a photo scanned by these or some service provider, insure that the settings used are similar to those I use with my V750 Pro Scanner as shown here.


Getting a scan of 600 pixels/inch will give your restorer a lot of good data to work with.

Also, if possible, attempt to have the scanner remove dust images from the scan. Dust removal via the scanner will save your photo restorer from incredibly tedious manaul work that can be done better, more quickly and more economically than having your photo restorer do the "cleaning".


Make sure the file with the scanned image has one of the following file extentions:


  • *.jpg
  • *.png
  • *.tiff (Preferred)
  • *.dng (Prefered)


Now you have a scan of the photo, You are wondering how to get it to me for restoration. Any of the following methods work:


  • if it not too big, email is just fine
  • Google Drive
  • Dropbox
  • if you are not in a hurry, US Postal Service works too



Here is the bad news.


I cannot tell you in advance how much it will cost to restore your photo.


The quality of the original image and the degree to which the original photo was degraded can vary widely from photo to photo.


Also, electronic display generally contains less data than printed images. Therefore, if you plan to display your restored image electronically, much less work will be needed to obtain an acceptable result.


Finally, the work of restoring a photo is, in a sense, never done. The true objective is to have an image that is acceptable when quality is evaluated accrding to cost.


All this being said, if you send me your scanned image and let me know how you plan to display the image, I will be happy to offer an estimate of how much I would charge to do the restoration.


My estimate will be based on a billing rate of $75/hour for my time.


Most photos can be satisfactorily restored in 30 minutes.



If you accept my estimate, work on your photo will procesd until I have used my estimated labor costs. At that time your image will be posted, for you to evaluate.


If you are happy with the image, it will be sent to you electronically once payment is received.


If you are not happy with the restoration, we can try to reach an agreement of how much additional restoration will cost and I will continue work. (This process of iterating to a satisfactory restorate can proceed as long as we desire.)


If we do not reach an agreement, I will provide the work I have done in exchange for my estimate.


This is a complex process, please let me know if you have questions. Your comments on how to make this clearer will also be appreciated


Thank you!